


Forget, Forget

by jadztone



Series: Sherlock Nanowrimo [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Pre-Slash, Set during TEH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-23 00:32:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11391636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadztone/pseuds/jadztone
Summary: After the bonfire, Sherlock sits alone at Baker Street and thinks about how John's brush with death makes him feel.





	Forget, Forget

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series of stories I wrote for Nanowrimo and posted on my tumbler page, sherlock-nanowrimo.tumblr.com. I was doing a story a day, generally leaving them open-ended if I wanted to add on to the story later in the month. The ones that I did add on to will be posted on AO3 as multiple chapters. They will all be posted as complete, with no expectation that I will ever revisit them. I haven't changed them from the way they were posted on tumblr, they have their issues, but I like to think of them as diamonds in the rough. The stories contain multiple crossovers with other fandoms, and multiple ships.

Remember, remember, the fifth of November.  Gunpowder Treason and Plot.

Sherlock sat in his chair, his dressing gown on, staring at the fire.  A glass of scotch was in his trembling hands.  It was a familiar tableau.  The last time his hands shook this much had been in Dartmoor.  After the drugged mist made him believe he was seeing the hell hound.  He’d been completely rattled by the betrayal of his senses.  He’d known that the hound couldn’t be real, so it had been a trick. And his mind believed it.  This was utterly anathema to the principles he upheld.  Logic, reason, trust in his brilliant mind to know the truth of what he sees.  He’d been so disturbed by what happened that he’d been unable to get ahold of himself.  He’d trembled, sweat beading on his forehead, couldn’t focus or concentrate. And he’d behaved terribly to John.

John.  Sherlock looked down at his hands, took a sip of scotch. Once again he was disturbed.  Even more so than last time.  Tonight, it wasn’t his senses that had betrayed him, it was his emotions.  John had come close to dying, so close.  A horrible, agonizing death it would have been.  Sherlock felt lightheaded, still thinking about the fear that had raged through him.  Fear so intense that he’d been breathless with it.  He’d never felt like that before.  Not even on the rooftop at St. Bart’s, when he had to make sure his plan went smoothly, or else Moriarty’s men would know he wasn’t dead and would have executed Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, and John.  He hadn’t been as afraid then because he’d had it all worked out, all planned, confident he would succeed.  This time, there’d been so many obstacles, and he’d also had to rely on Mary’s wits.  

Plus there was something about seeing John in imminent danger.  At St. Bart’s, the gun hadn’t been held to John’s head, Sherlock hadn’t seen the danger.  John had simply been standing in the street and Sherlock was preoccupied with saying the words to try and break John’s trust in him.  That pain, of needing to deliberately say hurtful things to his friend, had been more front and center, more immediate than whatever unseen person lurked out there waiting to shoot John.  Whereas with the bonfire…seeing the flames billowing, hearing the shrieks of the little girl as they pulled up on the motorbike, Mary screaming John’s name as Sherlock tore through the burning wood to get at John, pulling him out and seeing him dripping with blood.   No, he’d never felt fear like that in his life.  

Sherlock took another sip of scotch, his hands trembling even more than before.  Sentiment.  Mycroft had warned him over and over about it growing up.  Caring is not an advantage.  Sherlock subscribed fully to this principle, even mocked The Woman with it - telling her that sentiment was a chemical defect found on the losing side. It was true, of course.  When you felt sentiment, inevitably you would lose that which you felt sentimental about.  He’d almost lost John tonight.  And the chemical defect was short-circuiting his brain.  All he could see, over and over in his mind, was John lying there singed and bloody.  Remember, remember, the fifth of November.  He didn’t want to remember, he wanted to forget.  Like the useless trivia he would banish from his mind to keep it occupied with facts that mattered, he wanted to burn away that image of John.  He wanted bury his feelings of horror.  He wanted to evaporate the feelings of guilt.  John had been in that situation because of Sherlock. He was always in danger around Sherlock. It had never been this close, but really they’d just been playing the odds.  The logical side of his brain reminded him that John had faced danger long before he met Sherlock.  He’d been in bloody Afghanistan and almost died there.  But he’d left the military.  Left that danger and walked right into more of it with Sherlock.  

Sherlock was willing to bet that if he asked Mary, he’d learn that John hadn’t been in any danger at all during the time Sherlock was away.  At worst, he would have been hit by a car on that bike of his.  She wasn’t dangerous, like Sherlock.  For the first time tonight he thought of Mary and how she must have felt during the whole ordeal.  She wasn’t used to this sort of folly.  Like that doctor girlfriend of John’s from a few years ago, she was caught up in intrigue that she hadn’t asked for or expected.  She’d led a perfectly quiet and normal life with John, right up until Sherlock came back from the dead.  Now this.  It had been sheer luck that she knew what a skip code was.  What if she hadn’t?  If she had dismissed the text as spam, would John be dead by now?  Or would the perpetrator have sent more obvious clues to her?  Why did she get the texts, anyway?  Clearly the person was targeting John because of his association with Sherlock, why not send them to Sherlock?  Sending the texts to Mary was risky, how did he or she know that Mary would be able to figure them out?  The whole thing was puzzling.  Usually he liked puzzles.  Usually it sent a thrill of adrenaline into him to be facing such a clever adversary. Instead all he felt was disgust, and the sour taste of fear and rejection.

Rejection?  Where did that come from?  That doesn’t make sense, who rejected him?  John?  Yes. John.  When it was all over, after the trip to the hospital to heal his wounds, after John insisted that Sherlock be checked for burns, when they had both been released and it was time to go home…John had gone off with Mary to their flat, and Sherlock had gone alone to 221B Baker Street.  Of course John went with Mary.  He lived with her now.  They were getting married.  Why had he thought John would go with him back to 221B?  To…to…well, to at least discuss what happened.  Instead he said he would stop by the next day.  So now Sherlock was here by himself, dealing with his fear and trembling hands by himself.  John and Mary would have each other to talk through the night’s trauma.  They would hold each other till the trembling stopped. Sherlock squeezed the glass of scotch in his hand, willing his fingers to stop the tremors.  He grimaced, imagining the glass shattering in his hand, wanting it to happen as he gripped harder.

His cell phone buzzed on the table, startling him.  He loosened his grip on the glass.  When he saw the number on the display, he put the glass down and answered it.  “Mycroft?  What do you want?”

“Brother mine, I’m just calling to remind you that our parents will be in town tomorrow, and you will be expected to spend some time with them.”

Sherlock exhaled loudly. “You have got to be kidding me. Now?  Can’t this wait?  I’m in the middle of a case, not to mention something that has just come up that needs my full attention.”

“Oh sure.  Why not?  How about another two years of pretending that their son is dead?”

Sherlock drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair.  “You know guilt doesn’t work with me.  That is a sentimental emotion.”  He sneered the word sentimental.

“And you are a sentimental person, Sherlock, despite my best attempts.”

“What makes you think that?”

“John Watson.”

Sherlock pursed his lips together for a few moments.  “Funny you should mention him.  Someone else apparently wanted to find out just how sentimental I am about John.” Sherlock gave him a rundown of what happened with the bonfire.

Mycroft was silent as he mulled it over.  “You think this was some sort of test?  It’s an odd test, you would have made the same effort for anyone else.”  

“But they would have seen my reaction.  I wasn’t my usual unruffled self.  I was terrified, Mycroft.  Manic with fear.”  Sherlock looked at his hands.  They had stilled a bit during the first part of the phone call, distracted by the usual verbal sparring with his brother.  They were back to shaking again. “There was no other reason to perform such an exercise. This person was testing me. Trying to determine my state of mind in regards to John.”

“Your pressure point.” Mycroft said that slowly and thoughtfully.  

Sherlock noticed the inflection.  “Is all this familiar to you, Mycroft?  Do you know who did this?”

There was a long pause. “No.  Not for sure.  Plenty of unscrupulous people use this same tactic.  Moriarty knew that you had feelings about John.  And Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade.  He used it against you.”

“Yes, well, he didn’t factor in Molly Hooper, did he?”

“And for that, I and our parents are forever grateful.  Speaking of which, they will be coming by Baker Street tomorrow.  I expect you to treat them with the respect they deserve.”

“Deserve?  It’s their fault I am weak and vulnerable.  They sowed this sentiment in me.”

“And John Watson cultivated it.”

“Now someone out there wants to reap it.”

“You better keep an eye on your blogger, Sherlock.  Now that…er…someone has seen how much you care about him, he’s in more danger than ever before.”

Fear streaked through Sherlock.  He ended the call without another word and laid his cell phone down on the table.  He stood up and walked over to a box sitting on the mantle.  He opened it, and took out the gun that was kept in there.  He turned it around and around in his hands, staring at the gleaming metal.  He wasn’t sure if Mycroft really knew who did this to John, or if he just had a few possibilities in mind.  One thing was for certain, Sherlock would find out who did this.  And he would put a bullet in his head.

**Author's Note:**

> I see now that there are a couple of details that aren't canon compliant, but as this is a nanowrimo fic, I won't be correcting them.


End file.
